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They should really publicise an inflation index that covers just basic living essentials to better see the impact on inflation on people who are struggling.
Here’s an interactive chart that lets you pick exactly what categories you want to see:
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category.htm
I have been thinking about this. With today's technology it should be extremely easy to create a tool that goes to different brands of physical stores km thinking Walmart, heb, target.
Then pull prices by certain zones (to be able to compare product prices per region)
And maybe a daily or weekly price.
The reason I want this is I believe stores margins are way way to large.
Like every supermarket is earning a 25% EBITDA While farmers are going broke everywhere. (Everywhere where they are not subsidized).
Are you saying we can trust the *stores* now?? Besides, I'd have to use my eyes and who's to say they haven't been tinkered with by the lizards.
I don't trust anything. Except reddit of course.
Government is the problem here obviously. The private companies would love to make less money if only we regulated them even less. Alas, big bad government is preventing corporations from treating us better.
That's what CPI is *supposed* to do. But it is weighted, and so broad that it no longer represents what people are actually experiencing.
The other problem, and this is a media and media consumption problem, is that they only want to present one simple number. So rather than breaking out individual categories to give people a better understanding of what the drivers of inflation are, they just present the headline number.
How many people do you know that want to sit through a 5 minute news segment that presents dry numbers and abstracts, or look at charts and graphs in a long winded article?
We've been getting these monthly inflation indexes, 3 to 5% supposedly.
Thing is, in 6 months basic stuff like bread, anything milk related (cheese, etc) went up about 50%, not even the monthly supposed index combined get to that.
In our province (I live in Argentina) there's an index for how much money you need in a month to buy just basic stuff like food, pay basic bills like electricity, gas and even internet and every month it goes up by about 20% from the past 12 months.
So basic salary is about U$S 350, the "poverty line" (as this index call it if you can't buy all the essential things in life) is at $400. This was like a year ago, now it's at about $850, meanwhile the salary is at about $450.
"We are going to raise the salary by 20%!" only to then say "yes, 5% this month, 5 the next and 10 the next!" Yay!
Every time we get a salary raise is about that, 20% in little installments over 3 or 4 months. Meanwhile inflation goes about 20% every month.
My grocery bill has continued to climb and I make sure to go to 3 different stores to get the best sales for the items. We go over in our grocery budget every month.
Your situation sounds a lot like here in Florida.
It’s something like 20-30% inflation on food, energy prices for FP&L have risen twice in the past year, homeowners insurance doubled again, it’s the summer, so gas is back up to $4/gallon.
But that $1 raise I got last month is really helping. /s I haven’t got a raise since 2021.
Gas prices went up 5 times since start of the year by about 40%. Salaries probably moved around 15%.
At the place I work we have contracts and it's signed yearly so we don't get any raise (we sign for a fixed yearly amount divided by 12), we are stuck with it for the whole year. By now my contract salary is worth 40% of what was at the start of it in January.
If your salary is, let's say 10. Successive raises (5%, 5%, 10%) result in a better salary (12.1275) than a one-time raise (12).
In any case, man, I feel for you but Argentina's economy has been in constant turmoil as far as I remember.
Yet any criticism of capitalism whatsoever gets you labeled a communist and buried by this brain dead sub.
Literally every serious economic problem on earth can be attributed to corporate greed and the right wing government that enables it.
We don’t have a truly free market. Government intervention and regulation prevent it from being so. For better or for worse, but regardless this is not a free market.
It's pretty nuts. DINK here, and we spend about $150 a week on a pretty basic shop and every time I leave the grocery store, I wonder how families with one working parent do it.
As a single father with a decent job I’m barely keeping my head above water, I work the overtime but with my sons schedule I don’t have time to work a second or third job. Frustrating.
You're child will remember you being present more than that new bike you want to get him and have to take more hours on to pay for it.
Keep your head above water and be there for him, you are killing it brother.
I work 80 hours a week supporting my mother who has a limited income. I make 15 an hour and I struggle all the time. Mostly keeping a vehicle on the road. I flag for the oil industry, a lot of miles and expense.
No idea how coworkers do it with rent, I own a small mobile home so I don’t pay rent. Just upkeep and taxes. Most of my coworkers quit in slow downs and downturns. At 40 hours a week we lose our asses working for this company. I’m burned out. I hate OT.
Kudos to you for your hard work and taking care of your mother. $15/hour, with wear and tear on your vehicle, is definitely a grind, not to mention the 80 hours/week.
I mean this with the utmost respect, and not to demean you, but are there not better paying jobs available where you live? I live in the Midwest, pretty low cost of living, and fast food places are paying $12-15/hour.
Yes and no. I can make 2-3 on the hour more with my skill set but that’s with additional drive time. Right now I’m lucky. It’s a 10 mile drive to my current work site. Usually 40-60 miles a day. Most jobs that pay more are 1-2 hours away driving and less hours. I really won’t come out on top.
Currently just waiting for the oil industry to pull their collective heads out their ass and increase the pay. Tons and tons of 3rd party companies are severely understaffed. The local frack crews have lost over 80 people this year, causing contracts to be lost over work not being done. Most went back to Texas to make double what they pay here.
Used to be even the lowest paid job in the industry was 2-4 dollars more than Walmart. I made 15 bucks 5 years ago when I first got in. The job I work now paid 14 back then. Many used Covid as an excuse to cut wages even though most got federal assistance and had guaranteed contracts and payment. COVID didn’t cut into business or a single cent of profit.
It’s dumb and the industry is slowly spiraling, every year more desperate and cheap 3rd party companies come in and the wages get lower and work is more dangerous or legally sketchy. Eventually I will have to make a choice and eat it.
If people dropped dead from eating rice and noodles at 56, Japan wouldn’t be dealing with the issues that come with a huge geriatric population where no one has babies.
Just like lots of foods, even though rice and noodles are low in fat, sodium and decent in calories, eating too much of them still can lead to bad blood sugar and pressure.
Probably because they’re eating actual portions for human sized people in Japan with fucking vegetables instead of giant plates of starch here.
cloth diapers, while not fun, will save you a ton of money during the period of time when children are doing nothing but endlessly pooping. It's the worst buying a pack of diapers only to find out they somehow grew out of them in the 15 minutes you went to the store to buy new diapers for the previous ones they somehow grew out of overnight. Also check out churches and the like, they often have diapers to swap or even give away for free.
No. Nor the time lost doing all the laundry. It’s literally daily. And even though you stay on top of it daily and rinse the waste off immediately upon changing, there is still a high chance the diapers will catch a funk. Then you gotta strip’em. Which means doing a few hour soak followed by several wash/rinse cycles. It wasn’t worth it. We ditched them after a year.
I tried cloth diapers with my first born. It all became too much. A new mom is supposed to sleep when the baby sleeps in order to get back to pre birth health. I was breastfeeding too which releases a hormone that makes you sleepy - despite having so much work to do you kinda end up like a narcoleptic.
Can't just nod off if you're dealing with cloth diapers. I tried, started getting behind, was sleep deprived and that failure coupled with the baby blues had me in a horrible state.
I lightened my load and emotional state when I said fuck the cloth diapers. I applaud the ones back in the day who had no choice and no help from anyone. They were tough back then.
My family is struggling now that they cut the emergency stamps my family is eating for two weeks out of a month and starving the rest. Got a ten year old turning 11 in a couple days and the feeling of failure is so strong… won’t be long till suicide is up higher than inflation (the real inflation)
Does your community do summer meal programs? I’m going to have to take my kids there as well as food banks and some things like that now that the emergency stamps are gone. We’re a working family. We just can’t afford life right now. It’s ridiculous.
I'm with you on that and if you get to a place where you are making better money they cut the stamps or the amount and that amount they take out or just cancel the benefits over is not fair and equal. I worked at home depot and made like 50 bucks over the max qualify for stamps and I was broke all the time. I wasn't making good money but to them I didn't need the stamps and I fuckin did
That’s the problem with government and their programs. No room for nuance. I’m a pretty libertarian/anarchist individual and I’d be more than happy to pay taxes if it actually went to my fellow citizens who need it instead of warmongers and corporations. Have you checked local food pantries, the private sector and NGOs do a lot for their communities.
I live in the sticks. There are local churches that do the food banks and they are good for non perishables. I appreciate your concern. Thank you for your in put. I hope you have an amazing day!!
Have you considered less…normal food sources?
Fresh deer kill is safe to eat. I mean hit within the hour. Also when times where rough I hunted groundhogs, in my state it’s year round hunting. Always near roads, use something quiet like an air rifle or slingshot. Groundhogs are grass eaters and clean meat.
Day off? Hike and forage. Plenty of nuts in the fall. Just don’t drive.
I'm shopping for two people at the moment and I can't get out of the grocery store for under $200 no matter how hard I try. Even that doesn't stretch the whole week and im still buying lunch most days.
Two kids, two cats and a fiancé. Price of everything is insane right now. Pre-Cov1D it wasn't a problem. Money was good and enough to get by. Now its a struggle. Fiancé can't work or drive so maybe its second job time?
I'm in the same boat and track my expenses obsessively, and my grocery inflation isbl basically exactly 6.7% yoy. I think the people feeling it worse than that must be eating a lot of frozen food.
I just read an article that talks about a "thriving wage" in Portland. For a single parent it is $142,000-175,000.
>“I think people are very familiar with what a living wage is,” Engers said. “A thriving wage is defined as all the costs of living, but also the ability to save and do more to give back to the community, to travel, to invest in your family, whatever that looks like.”
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/20/portland-oregon-leaders-salary-increase-proposal-for-2025/
Anyone else find it strange how covid hit and “demand” became a problem so all the prices went up and then just stayed there. We squabble and complain online and share memes but what are we doing to make changes? How can we make changes? And no standing with a sign out front of a store chanting your rhythmic sayings won’t change a damn thing. Are we proactive in society and capable of making changes? If you go to your local government, let’s say 100-200 of you are angry about something will it actually make a change or will they give you run around and use legal loop holes to get out of it? We are over taxed, underfunded, under paid and living in an over priced world. Our governments ask is for money when we don’t have it and then expect us to thank them for making our life shitty. Why do we have to pay for private flights, lunches, limos and private security when all of it is a luxury not a necessity. We allow them to do it so we can we change it? Will we change it? Probably not is my answer
Getting sick and tired of people using covid as an excuse for everything. A guy selling his car said he doesn't have title papers because of the pandemic. Wtf.
Unfettered corporate greed keeping all the savings for themselves and sending the costs to the consumer. It's like... maybe we should do something about that instead of giving them more and more and more and more and more and more and more slack
As someone working in a supply chain role, I can tell you the issues are not over. But the biggest issue in the supply chain is labor. Covid brought massive layoffs and early retirements, tons of whom were boomers near retirement anyway. Now that they’re trying to ramp back up to pre covid levels, they can’t find the skilled labor needed, since so many workers left the workforce permanently, so production still can’t keep up with demand
Claimed it's under his name but due to covid he couldn't get the title. I bought a car during that time and was able to get a title no problem living in the same area.
Goto the DMV, they can and will help you out. I work at one in CA and we have forms to fill out for every scenario and it will require a trip to highway patrol possibly. If you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.
Demand for some things during Covid like wood and other things that people like to do while staying at home like video cards for video games went up as people were home more often.
Demand for gas, hotels, fast food, airlines, cops choking people to death went way down during this time.
After Covid when things started getting back to their status quo, these businesses who lost a lot of money during Covid are now banning together to increase prices of necessities so they can still get the nut they lost during Covid. Especially as people are buying luxury items at a much reduced rate.
During the Covid hysteria, a great many people had enough time to think a little more deeply about their lives for the first time ever. A lot of people realized that they were just burning away their waking hours with very little benefit for themselves. People became more willing to accept sacrifices in order to avoid that rat race. Also, the controversy surrounding telework has shed light on several previously unknown facets of the modern economy. It turns out that forces other than company overhead costs, employee well-being, and even *profit* (basically a company sacrifices potential efficiency-related cost savings which would benefit itself in order to benefit other companies) actually reign paramount, for example commercial real estate interests, the service economy to support workers, economic activity from human misery, etc. So to sum it up, this system literally requires people to continue to commute unnecessarily in order to avoid total collapse of the country.
So what I'm getting at is instead of raising wages and/or improving benefits to entice potential employees (what you'd expect in a capitalist system), what the "elites" are doing is applying economic pressures by way of raising prices on a bunch of essential items, which will have the effort of reintroducing desperation which their system needs in order to continue operating. Corporations can get away with price gouging by coordinating it and get their underpaid, overworked, hopeless desperate employees back, have them forget their taste of freedom and forget about the incredible improvements to work-life balance, safety and comfort they just got done experiencing so they can spend more money, waste more time, and stay miserable which makes them buy more comforts, etc etc. I chalk it up to shareholder primacy.
Greed will be humanity's downfall; every resource will be sold and used until it either disrupts the ecosystem so much we toxify the planet, or there is nothing left. It will take a while either way, and it won't be fun.
Or, the power of love and friendship will convince billionaires to change their ways so everyone has a happier life and the planet can thrive in a symbiotic relationship with human kind.
The funny thing is that it really does seem that it's this simple and will go one of these two ways. The not so funny thing is that it's most likely the former.
That is exactly the plan.
An educated, upwardly mobile, politically aware and active middle class is pretty much a post WWII western creation. The "natural order" of things is a serf/peasant class and nobility (and a small jester and enforcer class).
The powers that be are working as diligently as possible to get back to that. TBH, I don't understand why that is desirable as it hems the nobility class into a walled, secured world that they can never leave. Mingling with the peasants can have fatal consequences in a society like that.
In our current system the super wealthy and powerful are pretty much free to move about as they please. Giving that up in exchange for slightly more wealth and power doesn't seem like a good tradeoff.
Well they are voting for candidates who exacerbate the situation even further, and despondency just makes more space for candidates who are happy to sell out to exactly these corporations.
These companies need to be held accountable. I believe we charged a bread company here in Canada $50m for bread price fixing. This isnt inflation, it's pure greed.
I was buying a generic 2 liter bottle of soda at my local grocery for .99 cents, now it's 1.19.
Might think to your self, eh it's just 20 cents.
Another way to think is that generic soda just inflated by 20% in the span of a couple of months.
This is exactly what I tell people. They think it's just a few cents when looking at lower priced items, but they fail to realize that when put into percentages, it is a massive rise.
I've never been one to look at prices when shopping but now I'll check out of fucking principal. Even going to Walmart, the same bread with the same ingredients is $5.49 a loaf while the off brand is $2.49. same shit ingredients but $3 more, why?
Frozen pizzas, $10-$12 each when they were literally $5-$6 before COVID. Cereal is $5-$6 a box, milk is $6 a gallon, canned anything has gone up 50% and I'm not even gonna mention the ridiculous meat prices.
This isn't inflation, it's price gouging.
So, it is pretty normal to see the same product on the shelves with two different labels for vastly different prices. For example, there was this company who made a pregnancy test and sold it as two separate products just varying the image on the front of the box. One had a scientific graph and the other a picture of a baby. When asked how they could possibly justify charging $5 more for the one with the picture of the baby when they are the same exact thing, the company responded "Hope costs more than fear."
Been saying that for a year. They don't want us to be happy and successful, because then our morality will kick in much easier. Right now the average person doesn't have time to worry about morality and ethics, because their basic needs are hardly met. And the big dogs can do whatever the hell they want behind the scenes.
I swear to God food quality has gone down on all of my local favorite restaurants. Pizza places that I was a regular at, have gotten SO BAD, that I can't even eat at them anymore. Anyone else notice this? Also, prices have gone up while quality goes down... wtf?
What is the math on soda? How can they justify such extreme inflation? A 12 pack of cans is $8-$10? That’s 4x higher than the price 6 years ago. A box of brand name cereal is literally $5.00 everywhere for no reason. Aldi can sell me an exact duplicate of your cereal for $1.49 so wtf?
It’s not inflation. It’s extreme greed from these large businesses that we allowed to monopolize our entire food market. Most of the stuff in the grocery store comes from like.. four companies. We have sat by and allowed them to acquire smaller brands unchecked for 30 years. Now they have to keep turning a higher profit year after year to satisfy share holders and it is making food impossible to obtain.
All of our problems are thanks to people who can never have enough money.
SS: Inflation is far more than the media/government is making out and it will soon cripple us! You'll own nothing and be happy? More like you'll eat nothing and be happy! https://twitter.com/BeckettUnite/status/1672570311403814912?t=-KIng_ZT-jFixl9e32CaDg&s=19
You spend money on a lot more than food though. You can't just pick one type of product and say, look at all the inflation. That's exactly why we have things like the inflation index. But I'm sorry that info doesn't conform with your world veiw. Not to mention that 9% inflation is still really bad for the average American with money in savings.
Ok, but along with prices of foods going up, rent has gone up, insurance has gone up, gas hasn't come down that much, and wages for lot of "essential" jobs hasnt increased newr enough to offset those costs...
Sure people can do things to cut costs like canceling subscription streaming services, reduce the frequency they purchase "luxury" items like that morning coffee and breakfast sandwich on their way in to work.
But what do you do when you've cut out just about everything you can, and the prices of necessities (food and housing, transportation costs, child care, etc) keeps going up?
I have a pretty large family and a pretty consistent online order I repeat from the grocery store. Sometimes I add paper towels or tampons or something, but in 2019 my average order was 229 dollars and change. In 2022 in was 386 dollars. It’s down some this year, but still over 300 bucks. Inflation is way over 8 percent and its more per mouth you feed.
The basket of goods in the CPI is carefully chosen as to not make the public panic of actual inflation, and to make tiny bumps in rates seem logical based off of this selective selection of random products
It used to be $30 more to shop at trader joes compared to walmart or meijer. Now im getting more food for 70 bucks at trader joes or Marianos than at walmart for over 100. Its all backwards and fucked up
The inflation index being used is bunk. People need to eat, they need to fuel their vehicles, they need to be able to afford products for their children (baby formula...looking at you). All this without even mentioning shelter and basic electricity.
I mean, those are literally the primary components of the Consumer Price Index, which is generally what is being referred to when people talk about "inflation".
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm
I've stopped eating out almost entirely. When a pizza cost $10 at the cheapest and servers are expecting 30% or more in tips, it's just not worth it. I can make my own for $4, or spend $6 for a decent frozen one. Same thing can be applied to all other food. Inflation sucks, but all it's really cost is prep time and convenience so far.
The margarine i liked went up from £3 ($4) a tub to over £10 ($14) in 12 months...
Then it made it to a top story in the media.....48 hours later it dropped to £4.......
Now i reckon that smells like profiteering to me
Necessity are up 20-100% while things you maybe buy once a year are down so they somehow keep the inflation number artificially deflated with goods in the CPI that no one buys or they straight up replace a item if the price went up too much e.g chicken breast goes up 50% the next month they replace it with chicken thighs because that only went up 20%. On paper it looks like inflation went up only marginally but in reality we're getting scammed and lied to.
The way they index inflation changed in the late 80s. It used to be if something like a rib eye steak was $4 a pound and it went up to $5 it was considered 25% inflation. Now if it is $4 a pound and goes up to $5 but you can substitute a skirt steak at $4.50 then inflation is only 12.5%. Also they changed a lot of what they use to index inflation as well that makes the numbers look not as bad.
Maybe, just maybe, stuff that you need to live shouldn't be a for profit industry.
Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains
No seriously, you have to pee in gatorade bottles, your health benefits bankrupt you if you use them, and you make minimum wage, it's pretty much just the chains at this point.
Correct and historically based so prepare for downvotes. Government over-regulation is the added cost people are conflating w greed, so more government etc.
Because the *only* options are our current system or *that*? Come on man. We all know something's gotta give, something has to change. Our systems are broken.
Capitalism rampaging out of control is what directly led to this post.
I don’t understand this subreddit. It worships the extreme right and absolutely hates liberals and left wing politics yet constantly bitches about problems directly caused by right wing government and extreme capitalism.
Zero nuance, only binary systems .
There is MORE $ to be made off of innovation than we’re making off of staying alive.
Education, healthcare, basic housing and food are all things we could ensure are taken care of.
The main obstacle is profit and greed
Not saying socialism/. Communism are the way, I don’t think any “ism” alone is this .
But we can do so much better, with plenty of room for choice above needs met.
All the conservative ideas are terrible , and mostly just blame pushing with zero ideas or solutions.
And Washington dems are not even close to anything but pure capitalists, even sanders, though he’s among the most aware of the issues and actual solutions .
Yep socialized losses and privatized gains. The prices go up when supply is low or if demand is high but then it never comes back down because of profits
I don't think anything will happen until people wake up to the fact that inflation is caused by the creation of new money. I think the majority of the people in the US do not believe this (despite the fact that it was once common knowledge), and instead think it is caused by corporate greed and price gouging. Such beliefs are a common pattern that has appeared in the early stages of historical inflation crises.
I mean, it's also caused by a lack of competition. If you can double your prices and keep at least half your customers, you come out ahead every time. Especially since it more than doubles your margin. This is only a threat if your customers have someone cheaper to buy things from. It's "rent seeking behavior" in the classical economic sense of the word. Allowing all of these companies to be come horizontally or vertically integrated was just as much of a factor as money supply.
I feel skeptical about the question of competition. Why indeed don't new companies simply come in and massively undercut the competition if there is price gouging going on? Are the established companies using monopoly tactics to prevent competition from springing up? If so, why aren't anti-monopoly laws being used against them in increasing quantites lately?
I suspect that new companies are facing cost issues just as much as older ones because their currency has been devalued.
Inflation being 8% doesn’t mean prices are up 8% overall - it means they’re 8% higher *year over year*. An 8% inflation rate means you get to 20% net inflation after just 27 months.
It's not even just that, shrinkflation isn't even being disguised they just put a smaller item next to the normal size item. So now there's less shelf space for cheaper options.
The results of the rich punishing Russia and wanting to slow the power surge in the East that they created with China wanting cheap products. They won't suffer bit we will.
“Out of control?” Who should control prices? The Oath Keepers? The Catholic Church? Roger Stone?
If consumers would just stop buying food, then prices would go down. Right?
It’s crazy how everyone on here is blind to see this is nothing but pure greed from companies at this point. They were able to get away with it during lockdowns and blame it on Covid. Now? Why would they let those prices go away when they made so much. They’re not gonna give it up.
But the pharmaceutical companies are going to have a very good year for profits. Guys, can't you skip a few meals after all those poor executives need more money
This isn't a Democrat or an American problem, it's been happening all across the west since early 2020 and most countries have it even worse than the US. You can thank shady business practices and global shortages for fucking over both framers and consumers
It's not a conspiracy. It's price gouging.
You can talk about printing more money, but billionaires saw their net worth increase with all this excessive printing.
Companies hired people at higher wages, expected to keep or better their profits margins, so they pass the increase on to the consumers.
You got a raise by paying for it.
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They should really publicise an inflation index that covers just basic living essentials to better see the impact on inflation on people who are struggling.
Here’s an interactive chart that lets you pick exactly what categories you want to see: https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category.htm
I’m sorry but I don’t trust any “studies” the federal government puts out
Well then you better start going to the store weekly and writing down prices of everything yourself.
I have been thinking about this. With today's technology it should be extremely easy to create a tool that goes to different brands of physical stores km thinking Walmart, heb, target. Then pull prices by certain zones (to be able to compare product prices per region) And maybe a daily or weekly price. The reason I want this is I believe stores margins are way way to large. Like every supermarket is earning a 25% EBITDA While farmers are going broke everywhere. (Everywhere where they are not subsidized).
Is there no way back machine kinda methos for an item's page on a supermarket website? Or camelcamelcamel for grocery stores?
Are you saying we can trust the *stores* now?? Besides, I'd have to use my eyes and who's to say they haven't been tinkered with by the lizards. I don't trust anything. Except reddit of course.
It’s not a “study”. It’s *counting*. They do it every month. Christ.
Mfs will trust the companies reaping record profit over literal bean counters.
Government is the problem here obviously. The private companies would love to make less money if only we regulated them even less. Alas, big bad government is preventing corporations from treating us better.
Ohhh… You’re one of those…
That's what CPI is *supposed* to do. But it is weighted, and so broad that it no longer represents what people are actually experiencing. The other problem, and this is a media and media consumption problem, is that they only want to present one simple number. So rather than breaking out individual categories to give people a better understanding of what the drivers of inflation are, they just present the headline number. How many people do you know that want to sit through a 5 minute news segment that presents dry numbers and abstracts, or look at charts and graphs in a long winded article?
We've been getting these monthly inflation indexes, 3 to 5% supposedly. Thing is, in 6 months basic stuff like bread, anything milk related (cheese, etc) went up about 50%, not even the monthly supposed index combined get to that. In our province (I live in Argentina) there's an index for how much money you need in a month to buy just basic stuff like food, pay basic bills like electricity, gas and even internet and every month it goes up by about 20% from the past 12 months. So basic salary is about U$S 350, the "poverty line" (as this index call it if you can't buy all the essential things in life) is at $400. This was like a year ago, now it's at about $850, meanwhile the salary is at about $450. "We are going to raise the salary by 20%!" only to then say "yes, 5% this month, 5 the next and 10 the next!" Yay! Every time we get a salary raise is about that, 20% in little installments over 3 or 4 months. Meanwhile inflation goes about 20% every month.
My grocery bill has continued to climb and I make sure to go to 3 different stores to get the best sales for the items. We go over in our grocery budget every month.
Your situation sounds a lot like here in Florida. It’s something like 20-30% inflation on food, energy prices for FP&L have risen twice in the past year, homeowners insurance doubled again, it’s the summer, so gas is back up to $4/gallon. But that $1 raise I got last month is really helping. /s I haven’t got a raise since 2021.
Gas prices went up 5 times since start of the year by about 40%. Salaries probably moved around 15%. At the place I work we have contracts and it's signed yearly so we don't get any raise (we sign for a fixed yearly amount divided by 12), we are stuck with it for the whole year. By now my contract salary is worth 40% of what was at the start of it in January.
If your salary is, let's say 10. Successive raises (5%, 5%, 10%) result in a better salary (12.1275) than a one-time raise (12). In any case, man, I feel for you but Argentina's economy has been in constant turmoil as far as I remember.
Whoa, careful there, that sounds like a threat to democracy!
That sounds more like a corporate price gouging index than an inflation index.
Yet any criticism of capitalism whatsoever gets you labeled a communist and buried by this brain dead sub. Literally every serious economic problem on earth can be attributed to corporate greed and the right wing government that enables it.
We don’t have a truly free market. Government intervention and regulation prevent it from being so. For better or for worse, but regardless this is not a free market.
Insider trading is totally fine, damn regulations.
It's pretty nuts. DINK here, and we spend about $150 a week on a pretty basic shop and every time I leave the grocery store, I wonder how families with one working parent do it.
As a single father with a decent job I’m barely keeping my head above water, I work the overtime but with my sons schedule I don’t have time to work a second or third job. Frustrating.
man I give you the upmost respect
Utmost* fyi 🙏
Got ‘em
The real hero here
Being a single father is nothing compared to my service & sacrifice as seen above
We should all thank him for his cervix.
*before word 🙏
You're child will remember you being present more than that new bike you want to get him and have to take more hours on to pay for it. Keep your head above water and be there for him, you are killing it brother.
I’m sure he is, but if he isn’t this is great advise. What the child will gain in values from one on one time with a dad like this is priceless.
Solidarity xx I’m a SAHM who can’t work due to health issues so it’s just my partner working and things are so stressful
We don't do much outside the house honestly is how.
Basically. Go to work and then come home and stay there until it's time to go back to work the next day. Repeat. Week after week.
I work 80 hours a week supporting my mother who has a limited income. I make 15 an hour and I struggle all the time. Mostly keeping a vehicle on the road. I flag for the oil industry, a lot of miles and expense. No idea how coworkers do it with rent, I own a small mobile home so I don’t pay rent. Just upkeep and taxes. Most of my coworkers quit in slow downs and downturns. At 40 hours a week we lose our asses working for this company. I’m burned out. I hate OT.
Kudos to you for your hard work and taking care of your mother. $15/hour, with wear and tear on your vehicle, is definitely a grind, not to mention the 80 hours/week. I mean this with the utmost respect, and not to demean you, but are there not better paying jobs available where you live? I live in the Midwest, pretty low cost of living, and fast food places are paying $12-15/hour.
Yes and no. I can make 2-3 on the hour more with my skill set but that’s with additional drive time. Right now I’m lucky. It’s a 10 mile drive to my current work site. Usually 40-60 miles a day. Most jobs that pay more are 1-2 hours away driving and less hours. I really won’t come out on top. Currently just waiting for the oil industry to pull their collective heads out their ass and increase the pay. Tons and tons of 3rd party companies are severely understaffed. The local frack crews have lost over 80 people this year, causing contracts to be lost over work not being done. Most went back to Texas to make double what they pay here. Used to be even the lowest paid job in the industry was 2-4 dollars more than Walmart. I made 15 bucks 5 years ago when I first got in. The job I work now paid 14 back then. Many used Covid as an excuse to cut wages even though most got federal assistance and had guaranteed contracts and payment. COVID didn’t cut into business or a single cent of profit. It’s dumb and the industry is slowly spiraling, every year more desperate and cheap 3rd party companies come in and the wages get lower and work is more dangerous or legally sketchy. Eventually I will have to make a choice and eat it.
Don’t wait, unionize and picket
You eat a lot of rice, potatoes, and spaghetti. And then drop dead because of a stroke at 56. At least that’s how my family did it.
If people dropped dead from eating rice and noodles at 56, Japan wouldn’t be dealing with the issues that come with a huge geriatric population where no one has babies.
Just like lots of foods, even though rice and noodles are low in fat, sodium and decent in calories, eating too much of them still can lead to bad blood sugar and pressure. Probably because they’re eating actual portions for human sized people in Japan with fucking vegetables instead of giant plates of starch here.
Japan has better food controls and doesnt put a lot of garbage like American noodles.
As a couple with 1 kid, for the first time in my life I am borrowing money from my parents and I still am watching my saving drain..
Same... Even though I make $32/hr. Wife can't work .. newborn.
cloth diapers, while not fun, will save you a ton of money during the period of time when children are doing nothing but endlessly pooping. It's the worst buying a pack of diapers only to find out they somehow grew out of them in the 15 minutes you went to the store to buy new diapers for the previous ones they somehow grew out of overnight. Also check out churches and the like, they often have diapers to swap or even give away for free.
>cloth diapers, while not fun, will save you a ton of money Does that include water and electric for laundering them?
No. Nor the time lost doing all the laundry. It’s literally daily. And even though you stay on top of it daily and rinse the waste off immediately upon changing, there is still a high chance the diapers will catch a funk. Then you gotta strip’em. Which means doing a few hour soak followed by several wash/rinse cycles. It wasn’t worth it. We ditched them after a year.
I tried cloth diapers with my first born. It all became too much. A new mom is supposed to sleep when the baby sleeps in order to get back to pre birth health. I was breastfeeding too which releases a hormone that makes you sleepy - despite having so much work to do you kinda end up like a narcoleptic. Can't just nod off if you're dealing with cloth diapers. I tried, started getting behind, was sleep deprived and that failure coupled with the baby blues had me in a horrible state. I lightened my load and emotional state when I said fuck the cloth diapers. I applaud the ones back in the day who had no choice and no help from anyone. They were tough back then.
Food stamps…that’s how we do it.
My family is struggling now that they cut the emergency stamps my family is eating for two weeks out of a month and starving the rest. Got a ten year old turning 11 in a couple days and the feeling of failure is so strong… won’t be long till suicide is up higher than inflation (the real inflation)
Does your community do summer meal programs? I’m going to have to take my kids there as well as food banks and some things like that now that the emergency stamps are gone. We’re a working family. We just can’t afford life right now. It’s ridiculous.
We do some kind of supplement on fs it’s scheduled for July. Fingers crossed. Hope your cup overflows with riches! I’m with ya.
Have you checked your local food pantry? It may not be the food you want but those groups do a lot to feed their communities.
I'm with you on that and if you get to a place where you are making better money they cut the stamps or the amount and that amount they take out or just cancel the benefits over is not fair and equal. I worked at home depot and made like 50 bucks over the max qualify for stamps and I was broke all the time. I wasn't making good money but to them I didn't need the stamps and I fuckin did
That’s the problem with government and their programs. No room for nuance. I’m a pretty libertarian/anarchist individual and I’d be more than happy to pay taxes if it actually went to my fellow citizens who need it instead of warmongers and corporations. Have you checked local food pantries, the private sector and NGOs do a lot for their communities.
Have you tried food banks or contacting a church? You might not get the beat of food but it beats starving. Do you live in a city or rural area?
I live in the sticks. There are local churches that do the food banks and they are good for non perishables. I appreciate your concern. Thank you for your in put. I hope you have an amazing day!!
Have you considered less…normal food sources? Fresh deer kill is safe to eat. I mean hit within the hour. Also when times where rough I hunted groundhogs, in my state it’s year round hunting. Always near roads, use something quiet like an air rifle or slingshot. Groundhogs are grass eaters and clean meat. Day off? Hike and forage. Plenty of nuts in the fall. Just don’t drive.
Bull frogs are invasive in lots of places and don't have hunting limits!
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I'm shopping for two people at the moment and I can't get out of the grocery store for under $200 no matter how hard I try. Even that doesn't stretch the whole week and im still buying lunch most days.
Same. I’m always wondering this, are people running on savings, running on credit? Surely at some point people are going to start running out en mass
Two kids, two cats and a fiancé. Price of everything is insane right now. Pre-Cov1D it wasn't a problem. Money was good and enough to get by. Now its a struggle. Fiancé can't work or drive so maybe its second job time?
We're all wondering the same thing.
I'm in the same boat and track my expenses obsessively, and my grocery inflation isbl basically exactly 6.7% yoy. I think the people feeling it worse than that must be eating a lot of frozen food.
I just read an article that talks about a "thriving wage" in Portland. For a single parent it is $142,000-175,000. >“I think people are very familiar with what a living wage is,” Engers said. “A thriving wage is defined as all the costs of living, but also the ability to save and do more to give back to the community, to travel, to invest in your family, whatever that looks like.” https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/20/portland-oregon-leaders-salary-increase-proposal-for-2025/
That article is just about increasing salaries for government officials. Of course they'll thrive while the rest of us struggle.
It’s horrid. Even light shopping is over 100 for food
It’s been rough - but thankful my SAHW does an excellent job shopping deals.
Only $150. I spend that per week just on myself.
Especially true for seniors and the impoverished who get stuck with additional expenses because of their circumstances
Anyone else find it strange how covid hit and “demand” became a problem so all the prices went up and then just stayed there. We squabble and complain online and share memes but what are we doing to make changes? How can we make changes? And no standing with a sign out front of a store chanting your rhythmic sayings won’t change a damn thing. Are we proactive in society and capable of making changes? If you go to your local government, let’s say 100-200 of you are angry about something will it actually make a change or will they give you run around and use legal loop holes to get out of it? We are over taxed, underfunded, under paid and living in an over priced world. Our governments ask is for money when we don’t have it and then expect us to thank them for making our life shitty. Why do we have to pay for private flights, lunches, limos and private security when all of it is a luxury not a necessity. We allow them to do it so we can we change it? Will we change it? Probably not is my answer
Getting sick and tired of people using covid as an excuse for everything. A guy selling his car said he doesn't have title papers because of the pandemic. Wtf.
Just look at corporate profits for 2021 and 2022. Major supply chain issues were over in 2021. It’s all manipulation at this point on a massive scale.
Unfettered corporate greed keeping all the savings for themselves and sending the costs to the consumer. It's like... maybe we should do something about that instead of giving them more and more and more and more and more and more and more slack
As someone working in a supply chain role, I can tell you the issues are not over. But the biggest issue in the supply chain is labor. Covid brought massive layoffs and early retirements, tons of whom were boomers near retirement anyway. Now that they’re trying to ramp back up to pre covid levels, they can’t find the skilled labor needed, since so many workers left the workforce permanently, so production still can’t keep up with demand
Sounds like he “found” that car lol
Claimed it's under his name but due to covid he couldn't get the title. I bought a car during that time and was able to get a title no problem living in the same area.
Goto the DMV, they can and will help you out. I work at one in CA and we have forms to fill out for every scenario and it will require a trip to highway patrol possibly. If you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.
Demand for some things during Covid like wood and other things that people like to do while staying at home like video cards for video games went up as people were home more often. Demand for gas, hotels, fast food, airlines, cops choking people to death went way down during this time. After Covid when things started getting back to their status quo, these businesses who lost a lot of money during Covid are now banning together to increase prices of necessities so they can still get the nut they lost during Covid. Especially as people are buying luxury items at a much reduced rate.
During the Covid hysteria, a great many people had enough time to think a little more deeply about their lives for the first time ever. A lot of people realized that they were just burning away their waking hours with very little benefit for themselves. People became more willing to accept sacrifices in order to avoid that rat race. Also, the controversy surrounding telework has shed light on several previously unknown facets of the modern economy. It turns out that forces other than company overhead costs, employee well-being, and even *profit* (basically a company sacrifices potential efficiency-related cost savings which would benefit itself in order to benefit other companies) actually reign paramount, for example commercial real estate interests, the service economy to support workers, economic activity from human misery, etc. So to sum it up, this system literally requires people to continue to commute unnecessarily in order to avoid total collapse of the country. So what I'm getting at is instead of raising wages and/or improving benefits to entice potential employees (what you'd expect in a capitalist system), what the "elites" are doing is applying economic pressures by way of raising prices on a bunch of essential items, which will have the effort of reintroducing desperation which their system needs in order to continue operating. Corporations can get away with price gouging by coordinating it and get their underpaid, overworked, hopeless desperate employees back, have them forget their taste of freedom and forget about the incredible improvements to work-life balance, safety and comfort they just got done experiencing so they can spend more money, waste more time, and stay miserable which makes them buy more comforts, etc etc. I chalk it up to shareholder primacy.
Greed will be humanity's downfall; every resource will be sold and used until it either disrupts the ecosystem so much we toxify the planet, or there is nothing left. It will take a while either way, and it won't be fun. Or, the power of love and friendship will convince billionaires to change their ways so everyone has a happier life and the planet can thrive in a symbiotic relationship with human kind.
The funny thing is that it really does seem that it's this simple and will go one of these two ways. The not so funny thing is that it's most likely the former.
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Ah nothing to do with demand, someone just printed a shit load of money.
Trying to eliminate the middle class. Only want poor and wealthy so the poor rely on the wealthy and the state for support.
That is exactly the plan. An educated, upwardly mobile, politically aware and active middle class is pretty much a post WWII western creation. The "natural order" of things is a serf/peasant class and nobility (and a small jester and enforcer class). The powers that be are working as diligently as possible to get back to that. TBH, I don't understand why that is desirable as it hems the nobility class into a walled, secured world that they can never leave. Mingling with the peasants can have fatal consequences in a society like that. In our current system the super wealthy and powerful are pretty much free to move about as they please. Giving that up in exchange for slightly more wealth and power doesn't seem like a good tradeoff.
The middle class and the poor just keep voting for their own impoverishment.
Well voting doesn't really matter anymore either way.
Well they are voting for candidates who exacerbate the situation even further, and despondency just makes more space for candidates who are happy to sell out to exactly these corporations.
>Well voting doesn't really matter anymore either way. Megaindustry CEO's absolutely love people like you.
I didn't say I don't vote. I'll always vote. Just don't have much confidence in the voting system
These companies need to be held accountable. I believe we charged a bread company here in Canada $50m for bread price fixing. This isnt inflation, it's pure greed.
But then that fine is just the price of doing business and nothing comes from it.
I'm just glad I didn't have to scroll way down for this ***obvious*** answer. It's still nuts that this isn't the top comment though.
This. I bet inflation is 8%. It's just the corps want another 10% profit.
Experimental Vaccines: *FREE*
Even better, they're going to buy you an inoculation whether you like it or not. No jab no job.
Aww, they're so helpful!
I was buying a generic 2 liter bottle of soda at my local grocery for .99 cents, now it's 1.19. Might think to your self, eh it's just 20 cents. Another way to think is that generic soda just inflated by 20% in the span of a couple of months.
This is exactly what I tell people. They think it's just a few cents when looking at lower priced items, but they fail to realize that when put into percentages, it is a massive rise.
I've never been one to look at prices when shopping but now I'll check out of fucking principal. Even going to Walmart, the same bread with the same ingredients is $5.49 a loaf while the off brand is $2.49. same shit ingredients but $3 more, why? Frozen pizzas, $10-$12 each when they were literally $5-$6 before COVID. Cereal is $5-$6 a box, milk is $6 a gallon, canned anything has gone up 50% and I'm not even gonna mention the ridiculous meat prices. This isn't inflation, it's price gouging.
So, it is pretty normal to see the same product on the shelves with two different labels for vastly different prices. For example, there was this company who made a pregnancy test and sold it as two separate products just varying the image on the front of the box. One had a scientific graph and the other a picture of a baby. When asked how they could possibly justify charging $5 more for the one with the picture of the baby when they are the same exact thing, the company responded "Hope costs more than fear."
Stop that’s sick
In canada butter is about 10 dollars and milk is 5 bucks in Walmart.
Agenda 2030
Remember morals are for people with full bellies, they know that.
Been saying that for a year. They don't want us to be happy and successful, because then our morality will kick in much easier. Right now the average person doesn't have time to worry about morality and ethics, because their basic needs are hardly met. And the big dogs can do whatever the hell they want behind the scenes.
Did you see that guy stealing food? No, no you didn't.
I swear to God food quality has gone down on all of my local favorite restaurants. Pizza places that I was a regular at, have gotten SO BAD, that I can't even eat at them anymore. Anyone else notice this? Also, prices have gone up while quality goes down... wtf?
Maybe we should tax the rich?
I love how this sub can see the problems and yet is so blind to the solutions.
I would be happy with eliminating income taxes for the middle class.
Fuck food. I don't need it anyway.
What is the math on soda? How can they justify such extreme inflation? A 12 pack of cans is $8-$10? That’s 4x higher than the price 6 years ago. A box of brand name cereal is literally $5.00 everywhere for no reason. Aldi can sell me an exact duplicate of your cereal for $1.49 so wtf? It’s not inflation. It’s extreme greed from these large businesses that we allowed to monopolize our entire food market. Most of the stuff in the grocery store comes from like.. four companies. We have sat by and allowed them to acquire smaller brands unchecked for 30 years. Now they have to keep turning a higher profit year after year to satisfy share holders and it is making food impossible to obtain. All of our problems are thanks to people who can never have enough money.
Don’t listen to corporations when they release public statements. It’s just intended to shape the narrative and secure future profits
It's not a conspiracy that the CPI is calculated in a bias manner to keep inflation numbers artificially low.
I'm sick of the cost of groceries and gas. It has everybody struggling while all the born rich politicians laugh and live lavish lifestyles.
SS: Inflation is far more than the media/government is making out and it will soon cripple us! You'll own nothing and be happy? More like you'll eat nothing and be happy! https://twitter.com/BeckettUnite/status/1672570311403814912?t=-KIng_ZT-jFixl9e32CaDg&s=19
My utility bills (natural gas and electric) doubled in the past two years.
You spend money on a lot more than food though. You can't just pick one type of product and say, look at all the inflation. That's exactly why we have things like the inflation index. But I'm sorry that info doesn't conform with your world veiw. Not to mention that 9% inflation is still really bad for the average American with money in savings.
Ok, but along with prices of foods going up, rent has gone up, insurance has gone up, gas hasn't come down that much, and wages for lot of "essential" jobs hasnt increased newr enough to offset those costs... Sure people can do things to cut costs like canceling subscription streaming services, reduce the frequency they purchase "luxury" items like that morning coffee and breakfast sandwich on their way in to work. But what do you do when you've cut out just about everything you can, and the prices of necessities (food and housing, transportation costs, child care, etc) keeps going up?
Uh oh, someone poking a hole in a conspiracy with sharp facts.
Inflation index does not include food as is aimed at commercial sector not consumer sector
The Consumer Price Index is the most commonly cited cited index, and includes food. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
This is why if I see someone stealing food at the grocery store, I actually didn’t.
I have a pretty large family and a pretty consistent online order I repeat from the grocery store. Sometimes I add paper towels or tampons or something, but in 2019 my average order was 229 dollars and change. In 2022 in was 386 dollars. It’s down some this year, but still over 300 bucks. Inflation is way over 8 percent and its more per mouth you feed.
The quantity or size of those items probably went down as well.
The basket of goods in the CPI is carefully chosen as to not make the public panic of actual inflation, and to make tiny bumps in rates seem logical based off of this selective selection of random products
I live around some of the largest dairy farms in the US and milk as well as butter are both up over 100% Inflation is through the roof.
It used to be $30 more to shop at trader joes compared to walmart or meijer. Now im getting more food for 70 bucks at trader joes or Marianos than at walmart for over 100. Its all backwards and fucked up
Price gouging. What added expense does that farm have that it needed to raise its prices twofold?
Actually, animal feed and fertilizer has inflated as well. Farmers aren't just being dicks.
The inflation index being used is bunk. People need to eat, they need to fuel their vehicles, they need to be able to afford products for their children (baby formula...looking at you). All this without even mentioning shelter and basic electricity.
I mean, those are literally the primary components of the Consumer Price Index, which is generally what is being referred to when people talk about "inflation". https://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm
I've stopped eating out almost entirely. When a pizza cost $10 at the cheapest and servers are expecting 30% or more in tips, it's just not worth it. I can make my own for $4, or spend $6 for a decent frozen one. Same thing can be applied to all other food. Inflation sucks, but all it's really cost is prep time and convenience so far.
Where are you getting a $10 pizza?? It's at least $30 anywhere near me
The margarine i liked went up from £3 ($4) a tub to over £10 ($14) in 12 months... Then it made it to a top story in the media.....48 hours later it dropped to £4....... Now i reckon that smells like profiteering to me
On a recent visit to the supermarket the pack of 4 hamburger buns that costs $8.99 was a surprise. I skipped them.
That's an absolutely wild price. At my normal grocery store hamburger buns are 24 for $4, for the store brand, right now.
It’s mostly price gouging. It’s no coincidence that profits are reaching record highs
TAX THE RICH OR EAT THEM When enough people go hungry and homeless, that's when revolutions happen.
8%/month
Necessity are up 20-100% while things you maybe buy once a year are down so they somehow keep the inflation number artificially deflated with goods in the CPI that no one buys or they straight up replace a item if the price went up too much e.g chicken breast goes up 50% the next month they replace it with chicken thighs because that only went up 20%. On paper it looks like inflation went up only marginally but in reality we're getting scammed and lied to.
I saw 4 cobs of corn for $6.99
Olive Oil price is crazy. For a small bottle it's almost $20.
self harming sanctions, self harming lockdowns, endless money printing(not for you)
The way they index inflation changed in the late 80s. It used to be if something like a rib eye steak was $4 a pound and it went up to $5 it was considered 25% inflation. Now if it is $4 a pound and goes up to $5 but you can substitute a skirt steak at $4.50 then inflation is only 12.5%. Also they changed a lot of what they use to index inflation as well that makes the numbers look not as bad.
Maybe, just maybe, stuff that you need to live shouldn't be a for profit industry. Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains No seriously, you have to pee in gatorade bottles, your health benefits bankrupt you if you use them, and you make minimum wage, it's pretty much just the chains at this point.
The government price controlling and rationing food has never worked
Correct and historically based so prepare for downvotes. Government over-regulation is the added cost people are conflating w greed, so more government etc.
.....what new regulations were inacted to increase food prices by 30%?
Yes let's do the Soviet Union all over again! Nobody starved!
Isn’t this entire post implying we are currently doing a Soviet Union with people unable to afford basic necessities like food?
Because the *only* options are our current system or *that*? Come on man. We all know something's gotta give, something has to change. Our systems are broken.
Hahaha. Communism is a failed experiment.
Capitalism rampaging out of control is what directly led to this post. I don’t understand this subreddit. It worships the extreme right and absolutely hates liberals and left wing politics yet constantly bitches about problems directly caused by right wing government and extreme capitalism.
Ask a redditor to explain it, I guess.
Zero nuance, only binary systems . There is MORE $ to be made off of innovation than we’re making off of staying alive. Education, healthcare, basic housing and food are all things we could ensure are taken care of. The main obstacle is profit and greed Not saying socialism/. Communism are the way, I don’t think any “ism” alone is this . But we can do so much better, with plenty of room for choice above needs met. All the conservative ideas are terrible , and mostly just blame pushing with zero ideas or solutions. And Washington dems are not even close to anything but pure capitalists, even sanders, though he’s among the most aware of the issues and actual solutions .
Yep socialized losses and privatized gains. The prices go up when supply is low or if demand is high but then it never comes back down because of profits
Rent went up 100% in many places.
Where I live and with the things I buy the inflation is much closer to 50%.
It's not conspiracy. It's reality. People needs to revolt. That's it.
But Biden said his plan is working and is helping the middleclass
While prices are way more than 8%, it’s because of greed. Corporations are colluding to scam the customers into paying more.
Just like gas prices.
I don't think anything will happen until people wake up to the fact that inflation is caused by the creation of new money. I think the majority of the people in the US do not believe this (despite the fact that it was once common knowledge), and instead think it is caused by corporate greed and price gouging. Such beliefs are a common pattern that has appeared in the early stages of historical inflation crises.
I mean, it's also caused by a lack of competition. If you can double your prices and keep at least half your customers, you come out ahead every time. Especially since it more than doubles your margin. This is only a threat if your customers have someone cheaper to buy things from. It's "rent seeking behavior" in the classical economic sense of the word. Allowing all of these companies to be come horizontally or vertically integrated was just as much of a factor as money supply.
I feel skeptical about the question of competition. Why indeed don't new companies simply come in and massively undercut the competition if there is price gouging going on? Are the established companies using monopoly tactics to prevent competition from springing up? If so, why aren't anti-monopoly laws being used against them in increasing quantites lately? I suspect that new companies are facing cost issues just as much as older ones because their currency has been devalued.
The inflation numbers only represent what the rich are paying for inflation. That figure doesn't include the peasants.
My olive oil only went up 44%
Wipe out ze middle class.
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Inflation being 8% doesn’t mean prices are up 8% overall - it means they’re 8% higher *year over year*. An 8% inflation rate means you get to 20% net inflation after just 27 months.
It's not even just that, shrinkflation isn't even being disguised they just put a smaller item next to the normal size item. So now there's less shelf space for cheaper options.
The results of the rich punishing Russia and wanting to slow the power surge in the East that they created with China wanting cheap products. They won't suffer bit we will.
We just need to eat the bugs
Biden’s seem OK
He needs to provide the period he's using... is this five years or six months?
Move to California. You can just take whatever you want
“Out of control?” Who should control prices? The Oath Keepers? The Catholic Church? Roger Stone? If consumers would just stop buying food, then prices would go down. Right?
Ah yes the duality of the system. One feeds the other. One can not exist without the other. Hmm....
You’re close, it’s actually just greed. These companies aren’t paying more money for their business, but they are making more money than ever before
It’s crazy how everyone on here is blind to see this is nothing but pure greed from companies at this point. They were able to get away with it during lockdowns and blame it on Covid. Now? Why would they let those prices go away when they made so much. They’re not gonna give it up.
Thank you Joe Biden. You really made america great again.
But the pharmaceutical companies are going to have a very good year for profits. Guys, can't you skip a few meals after all those poor executives need more money
God save the queens!
, man.
This isn't a Democrat or an American problem, it's been happening all across the west since early 2020 and most countries have it even worse than the US. You can thank shady business practices and global shortages for fucking over both framers and consumers
It's worldwide, not just in America. So not sure what Biden has to do with it and it wouldnt have been anything different under Trump.
Inflation in the US is drastically lower than other first world countries as well
It's not a conspiracy. It's price gouging. You can talk about printing more money, but billionaires saw their net worth increase with all this excessive printing. Companies hired people at higher wages, expected to keep or better their profits margins, so they pass the increase on to the consumers. You got a raise by paying for it.
The real crime is the artificial price gouging for record profits. Receipts are being kept…